Our programmes are organic to ensure that we bring you the very latest perspectives. If you would be interested in getting involved as a Speaker, please let us know! Email: teampulse@pulseconferences.com. We would also very much value your input into companies, topics or specific persons you may like to see on our agendas. These are your agendas.
Chaired by
Steve Hill, Former Global CISO, Credit Suisse
Steve Hill is an independent strategic adviser, helping Boards to navigate geopolitics, national security and cybersecurity challenges. Steve served as the Group CISO at Credit Suisse and deputy Group CISO at UBS until August 2024. His previous appointments at Credit Suisse included Global Head of Operational Resilience and Group Head of Technology, Cyber and Third Party Risk.
Steve served in the British Government for over thirty years, including as Deputy Director in the National Security Secretariat of the UK Cabinet Office, with responsibility for aspects of cybersecurity policy. For over thirty years, Steve worked at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in a variety of National Security roles with a focus on transnational threats including terrorism and weapons proliferation. He served overseas in Vienna, Washington, Dubai, Kabul and New York. Steve is a senior visiting research fellow at King’s College, London. He sits on several global advisory boards including those of Dell Technologies, Venari and Twine.
Meet our 2024 Panel of Board Directors (partial list)
Lorraine Heggessey, Former Controller of BBC 1
Lorraine is a trailblazing business leader, who has driven success and transformation in a range of high-profile roles in the public, private and third sector. The first female controller of BBC 1, Lorraine led the channel to become the most popular in Britain, overtaking its main competitor, ITV1, for the first time.
• With an annual budget of £1billion, she revamped Saturday nights introducing flagship hit shows including Strictly Come Dancing and the new Dr Who as well as bringing dramas into the schedule such as Spooks and Waking the Dead.
• Moving on to become CEO of talkbackThames, her tenure included the introduction of Britain’s Got Talent and Take Me Out, and resulted in profits increasing by over 50% in her first two years.
• In 2012, she secured private equity investment for her vision to build a new independent production group.
• As Executive Chair, Lorraine led Boom Pictures through several deals in quick succession to build the 7th largest independent production company in Britain (worth c£100 million with offices worldwide), subsequently acquired by ITV in 2015 and renamed Two Four Group.
• Lorraine was CEO of The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. She helped develop and refine its unique model of venture philanthropy. Focuses included mental health – through the Heads Together campaign – and supporting wounded, sick and injured veterans.
• Lorraine’s is known as the woman who sacked Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon for taking cocaine, turned the tables on reporter Roger Cook by door stepping him for a Channel 4 Documentary and secured the first ever television interview with notorious villain Mad Frankie Fraser for a series on the history of crime in Britain.
Roger Flynn Chairman, Cooke Optics Former CEO and leader in transformation change , Virgin, British Airways, Prudential
Roger is passionate about transforming organisations, markets and business models and the Leadership required to deliver the Vision. He has driven transformational change in highly recognised global businesses and invests in media and travel businesses that have the potential to disrupt their markets.
- Roger is a Chairman and investor in media, travel and technology businesses: he is Chairman of Cooke Optics, a camera lens manufacturer for the Film & TV industry, ERA Technology, a IaaS provider to the media industry, Luxtripper, a luxury travel agency, D R Communications, a company offering cloud hosted telephony and mobile solutions, and Clearvac Group, an international Cruise Ship and Superyacht maintenance services business.
- Recognised CEO and leader in transformation change having driven change in global organisations including Virgin, British Airways, Prudential, the BBC and SDI Media.
- Roger started his career at Virgin working directly for Sir Richard Branson on deals and new business ideas. He then became Commercial Director of Virgin Communications, the media arm of Virgin Group.
- He was General Manager World Sales & Distribution at British Airways where he transformed the £1.2 billion distribution system for BA and launched electronic ticketing and created ba.com with a simultaneous launch in 72 countries across the world.
- He was Managing Director of Prudential Retail, with £2 billion in revenue and 6 million customers. Joining immediately after the pension’s mis-selling scandal, he drove a major business transformation including a £200m CRM programme and an innovative new sales process.
- Roger was Chief Executive of BBC Ventures Group, the commercial B2B arm of the BBC with 4,500 staff providing media services to the BBC and broadcast/IT customers around the world. Roger ran SDI Media Group, a global film and television business with operations in 32 countries where he accelerated the growth of the business and completed four acquisitions before the sale of the business for $250m.
Haydn Brooks, Co-Founder & CEO, Risk Ledger
Coming from a background in cyber risk specialising in supply chain security, Haydn quickly recognised the huge process issues, sunk cost, lost opportunities, and valuable business hours wasted by clients and suppliers alike, all trying to run disparate supply chain assurance programmes in a mutually exclusive way. This led Haydn to co-found Risk Ledger, the technology platform that combines a security governance platform with a secure social network.
Clients using our platform have seen their cost of running a supply chain security programme reduce by over 70% whilst collecting better quality and more actionable data over their suppliers.
Risk Ledger is the enabler for assurance programmes to:
● rapidly and easily scale across whole supply chain networks;
● allow the electronic collection of self-assessed assurance data;
● deliver continuous real time monitoring & alerts of supplier security controls;
● provide the tools for just one FTE to run entire assurance programme for 1000’s of suppliers.
Haydn’s team is innovating and pushing mutual supply chain assurance and security governance into the twenty second century.
🏆 2022 Financial Times Tech Champion
🏆 Forbes List 30 Under 30 – Manufacturing & Industry.
🏆 Winner of the 2019 Cyber Den Award sponsored by the UK Government’s National Cyber Security Centre.
🏆 Winner of the 2019 Most Innovative Cyber Company Award sponsored by TechUK.
Rupert Lee-Browne, Chairman and Group CEO, Caxton
Rupert Lee-Browne is Chairman of Caxton and a FinTech investor. He founded Caxton with £25,000 capital and has driven the business towards its £1bn turnover and status as one of the UK’s finest entrepreneurial success stories. Prior to establishing Caxton, Rupert launched several successful innovative businesses in the finance and media sectors, all with a focus on new technology. He is now innovating payment solutions by investing in smart blockchain tech both within Caxton and in other businesses. Keen to champion today’s technology entrepreneurs, Rupert regularly speaks at industry events about cyber security, how the future lies in blockchain for the finance industry, and the British start-up ecosystem. Before founding Caxton in 2002, Rupert had an extensive career in media; working for broadcasters, publishers, as well as founding internet start-ups. He started his first business aged 22. As CEO he leads Caxton’s strategy of building innovative technology for payments and ensures the company remains at the forefront of our industry. Outside the business he’s a regular speaker and media commentator on fintech and payments as well as investor in tech start-ups. Rupert holds a degree from London University and is visiting lecturer at Bayes Business School.
Meet our 2024 Panel of CISOs and Luminaries (partial list)
Alan was formerly Group CISO at Babcock International, UK CSO at CSC and T-Systems, an Associate Partner at IBM Security, and served in the Royal Air Force for 21 years.
Highly competent, organised, results-driven & innovative CISO with 16 years of international experience in Cyber Security, Risk & Control, Assurance, Governance & Oversight and Compliance in regulated and non-regulated industries (FS, utilities, chemical & manufacturing). Proven track record of delivering business-aligned cyber strategies to protect the businesses’ EBITDA and enable business growth. Strongly collaborates with C-level in highly challenging environments to deliver exceptional client experience. Delivered transformational change in greenfield and brownfield opportunities.
Has a ‘can do’ attitude towards solving complex problems by identifying creative solutions. Recognised for bringing out the best in team members through her excellent communication, motivational and coaching skills to manage teams effectively. She responds to challenges with dedication, perseverance, enthusiasm and pragmatism. Very ambitious and committed to self-development and progression to further deepen her leadership and technical competencies.
Key Achievements:
•Developed and delivered Cyber Security Strategies and Roadmaps at various internationally operating organisations covering both IT and OT to enhance their cyber resilience & protect their EBITDA resulting in an increase of maturity ratings by at least one tier
•Successfully navigated through cyber attacks to mitigate impact on business operations and protect against a financial loss of £120k
•Implemented ISO27001 to enhance the company’s reputation & customer trust and support the bid for a new business
•Delivered first Business Impact Assessment to mitigate gaps and improve the company’s overall business resilience
•Developed new reporting metrics to measure performance against the regulatory NIS-R requirements which were praised by the Drinking Water Inspectorate as an exemplar across the water industry; as a result the regulator asked the other water companies to use the same approach going forward
•Worked in cultural diverse companies which helped me to quickly flex and adapt my style to local communication styles e.g. UK, US, Germany, NL, Middle East (UAE) and Asia (Philippines )
•Built security functions from scratch and successfully moved it into BAU
•Securely manoeuvred through Covid-19
A successful senior Chief Information Security Officer and Operational Risk Director with a proven track record in multi-cultural and multi-national organisations. Able to bridge technical and business disciplines and communicate at all levels. Extensive knowledge of Information Security, Cyber Security, Physical Security, BCDR, Operational Risk, Crisis Management, Data Protection, Financial Crime and Compliance. The first 16 years of Graham’s career were spent in the Diplomatic Service engaged in technical security for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He then moved to the financial services sector where he has held senior security posts with Abbey National, Standard Chartered, Barclays, RBS, HBOS and ING. Through these roles he has developed a holistic approach to risk management and security, holding responsibility for information risk, IT security, physical security, fraud, money laundering, business continuity planning, compliance, crisis management and intelligence. He has also worked outside of the banking industry as the Group Head of Information Risk for Centrica. He then held the position of Director of Data Security at Nationwide Building Society before taking the role as Head of Information Security at Camelot Lottery Solutions and then Interim Head of Cyber Security at Yorkshire Water. He has a master’s degree in Information Security from Royal Holloway.
Guido Grillenmeier is the Principal Technologist of Semperis in EMEA. Based in Germany, Guido has been a Microsoft MVP for Directory Services for 12 years. He spent 20+ years at HP/HPE as Chief Engineer. A frequent presenter at technology conferences and contributor to technical journals, Guido is the co-author of Microsoft Windows Security Fundamentals. Today he is concentrating on cyber-resilience, with a focus on Directory Services – both on-prem and in the cloud – securing companies around the globe.
Heather is a technology, security and risk leader with a proven track record of achievement in government, public and private sectors. She was recognised by her peers as “CISO of the Year 2024” at SC Awards Europe and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Information Security. With experience spanning in-depth engineering to board level management, Heather is adept at setting direction and taking accountability for security in large and complex organisations (> £1bn turnover). She is an accomplished strategist with significant experience of leading through crisis (including managing major cyber incidents), and leading strategic change for digital, AI, security and culture transformations. Heather has expert level understanding of the security implications of transformation and champions “secure by design” and engineering-based approaches to security. She combines people-centric leadership with a strong emphasis on the technical aspects of cyber security and resilience as part of her holistic approach.
A proven consulting and managed services sales leader with experience in winning large complex engagements, working at Board level with a focus on building long lasting trusted client relationships. Works with clients at a global level across all industries on the challenges of protecting client’s intellectual property, assets, brand and reputation from the impact of cyber. Built a global practice to assist clients in the development of security strategy in the context of cyber business risks; with a particular focus on advising Boards on the potential business impact of cybersecurity, and on quantifying cybersecurity risk in financial terms. Builds innovative marketing approaches to build new client relationships and deepen current client partnerships. In demand as a speaker to communicate cyber as a business risk to the C-suite, on conference panels, to analyst meetings, and to colleagues, on stage, on video and on social media. Joined the Tech UK Cyber Management Committee in 2018 and represented the private sector at the World Economic Forum Annual Cybersecurity Meeting in 2022. Leads in a matrixed environment, supporting teamwork and collaboration across globally distributed and culturally diverse teams. Committed to nurturing talent, actively coaching and mentoring members of the wider organization. Male Ally for the Women in Security Excelling programme from 2019 to 2023. Passionate about attracting talent into the cybersecurity profession and has been a member of the UK National Cyber Security Centre’s Industry Advisory Board for their CyberFirst programme since 2018. Founded the IBM UK veterans, Reservists & military spouses network in 2009, which received the MOD Gold Award and is a passionate advocate for training military veterans to help address the cyber skills gap, actively promoting non-profit initiatives such as Salute My Job and Tech Vets. An in-demand lecturer both at Oxford University’s Said Business School and Centre for Doctoral Training on Cybersecurity, and also at Warwick University’s MSc Course on CyberSecurity and Management. Joined IBM in November 1995 after serving six years in the Royal Green Jackets in the British Army, including serving as the Regimental Signals Officer.
Kevin is an innovative and dynamic security professional, with a passion for driving change by successfully engaging with all levels of the business. He is passionate about the benefits of cognitive diversity as a key ingredient of successful organisations.
Kevin is passionate about physical and mental resilience and wellbeing inside and outside of his work. He is an advocate for men ‘opening up’, and a coach to multiple fighters, including a Kickboxing world champion.
He believes that security should be made a key differentiator to drive sales and customer retention, not just a cost centre.
Kevin has been a board advisor to multiple start-ups and industry groups, such as The Cybermaniacs, LT Harper, ClubCISO, and an advisory council member to ISC2 UK. He has previously been the CISO for FNZ Group and JustEat. He’s currently the CISO at NatWest Boxed, building the UK’s premier provider of banking-as-a-service, and Mettle, a small business bank account by NatWest.
Kieran serves as the Head of Security Engineering at Bridewell, where he leads efforts to strengthen digital defences and drive advanced cybersecurity initiatives. Bringing over 12 years of experience from his tenure at Microsoft, Kieran is a recognized expert in state-of-the-art cloud solutions and adept at addressing complex security challenges faced by clients. He holds a master’s degree in mathematics and physics, with a keen interest in the evolving fields of cryptography and quantum computing; so feel free to engage him in discussions about their potential to transform the digital landscape in the coming years!
Most recently the executive vice president for managed and cloud services at CDW’s Sirius, Conley also served on the board of directors. Prior to joining Sirius, Conley held the role of senior vice president at Forsythe Technology, now an integrated part of Sirius, where he specialized in emerging technologies and key accounts. He joined Forsythe in 1993 as an account manager and quickly rose through the ranks by serving many of the company’s largest clients, focusing on security strategies.
Conley has been a guest-lecturer for the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and the University of Notre Dame Executive MBA Program, educating executive business students about IT issues in business context. He is also a sought-after commentator on technology, including for Tech Talk with Craig Peterson, the No. 1 Saturday morning radio show in the Boston market. Additionally, he has been published in CIO Insight, IT Business Edge, and Information Today.
Quentyn Taylor is Director of Information Security at Canon Europe, Middle East and Africa. Using the power of stories and his own experience of testing products to destruction; Quentyn has embraced building business relationships across the world whilst driving Canon’s strategy and educating business customers to minimise their security risk. Before joining Canon, Quentyn has worked in a variety of industries such as Internet service providers as well as startup businesses.
Roy is a veteran Cyber Security, Industrial OT Security, Business and Tech Delivery Leader with nearly 30 years of professional experience in Financial Services, Retail, Travel, FMCG, Manufacturing, Energy, Government, Construction and many more industries.
He specialises in fractional CISO services, IAM, and helping security professionals sell their improvement and transformation programmes to the board.
Roy has also led major digital and business transformation programmes outside of security, giving him a broad perspective on delivering commercial value to the board.
Alongside his work with more established corporates, as a CTO, business owner/founder, he’s also helped a variety of startups mostly related to SaaS to commercially and broadly technically strengthen their pitch decks/value propositions
Simon Christoforato is the CEO of Vivace, a QinetiQ Business unit, delivering the Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) in partnership with the Home Office. Simon has over 30 years experience in National Security and Defence including the air, land and C4ISR domains. He has a broad background including start-up’s, Strategic Business Development, Systems and Programme Management. He has a proven ability to translate concepts into tangible commercial propositions and passionately believes in the power of collaboration, especially between the Public and Private Sectors to drive mission impact.
Simon has 40 years of experience in information technology and cyber security across the software, financial services, and energy sectors. He spent 18 years working for bp in a variety of global roles, including the Group Chief Information Security Officer and VP of Global Infrastructure.
Simon now combines advisory and executive roles for several organisations, including Semperis, Onyxia, Cyera and E&Y.
He has been recognised for his advocacy of diversity and inclusion with several nominations for a top Corporate Ally.
Simon has served as an advisor to NHS Digital and Natural History Museum on cyber security.
Risk, Compliance, and Control Professional with a proven record of providing thought leadership as well as technical expertise throughout the business. Pragmatic solution oriented with an eye towards results.Strong analytical and technical skills, as well as experience communicating and working with client business leaders, stakeholders, project business sponsors, project IT team, and sales & marketing associates
Creating and executing test plans for operating systems and supporting software as well as IT and SOX controls
Microsoft software including the MS Office suite, especially: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Project, and Access
Managing small to medium sized projects and leading teams of technical personnel
Controls, Compliance and Governance within a large organization
Understanding of COBIT, COSO, HIPAA, SOX, PCI, PII, and Privacy concerns
Process understanding, documentation, and improvement using Lean methodologies
Data classifications and best practices for compliance
Reducing risk using project security risk assessments and Outside Service Provider assessments (Third Parties)
RSA Archer eGRC Suite, Qualys Vulnerability Management, McAfee Vulnerability Management
Write and review Policies, Standards, Controls, and processes for IT Security Governance
Tim is CEO and Co-Founder (with Dr Mike Butler) of Think Cyber Security Ltd. ThinkCyber offer the next generation in Security Awareness. Their Redflags® software product applies behavioural and learning science theory, in a highly innovative approach to deliver context-sensitive just-in-time guidance.
Tim has worked in IT for more than 25 years both in consulting and corporate IT with organisations including Logica, PA Consulting, Sepura and was previously Global Head of IT for the cyber division of BAE Systems (previously known as Detica). Tim graduated top of his year in Computer Science with AI at the University of Leeds, holds an MBA from the Open University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship from Cambridge University.
Tim posts daily on security awareness and behaviour change topics on LinkedIn and is proud to have helped ThinkCyber gain significant recognition for their Redflags® product: Teiss Awards for “Best Cyber Security Training & Awareness Product or Service” in 2024, NCSC for Startups Programme, Accenture Fintech Innovation Lab 2022; TechUK Cyber Innovator of the Year 2021; SC Award Europe (Best Professional Training Programme); CyberTech100; TechInvest GovTech Top 10; Finalists in NYC Mayor’s Cyber Security Moonshot Challenge; members of TechNation Cyber 2.0 cohort; members of London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement (LORCA) cohort 1; Finalists Pitch@Palace 9.0.
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